Point of view

Seeing what they see

This snippet features three characters.

Who is the point of view character? And how do you know?

"What happened?" cried Mrs Timmins in terror. "Your Lordship, all those bats! Where did they come from? Why would they suddenly appear like that? And so many! They almost hid the sun."

The sorcerer didn't answer her. He seemed deeply troubled by what had happened. "It should not be," he muttered, but slowly he forced himself out of his daze. His wrinkled brows weighed heavily over his weary eyes as he turned them on Marcel.

This made the boy more terrified than ever. He would gladly ride Gadfly over that treacherous stream a dozen times rather than stand here, waiting for Lord Alwyn to unleash his magic upon him.

The Book of Lies(2004)
  • The point of view character is Marcel, the boy in the third paragraph.
  • We know he is the POV character because we get direct access to his thoughts and feelings.
  • But somehow we also know how the other characters feel!
    • Mrs Timmins is terrified.
    • Alwyn is troubled, dazed, and tired.
  • How do we know this?
    • Do we have access to their thoughts and feelings? No.
    • We learn how they feel from the way they look, sound, and behave.
    • This is all information that Marcel can perceive in his environment (i.e. he can hear and feel the emotion in Mrs Timmins' scream, he can read the weariness on Alwyn's face).

graphic showing narrator looking at a scene of an elf and a dwarf character mining for gems. The elf is the point of view character and he is thinking that the dwarf is stinky. The dwarf is examining a rock but we don’t know what he is thinking.

Each of the examples below describes what secondary characters are thinking and feeling.

Do they follow the rule of only conveying what the point of view character could perceive or do they 'jump inside' the secondary characters?

"No, no, that can't possibly be true," said Mr Malady. "I'm sure I instructed our accounts department to pay you with utmost urgency." He sounded completely sincere, like this call was about a baffling one-off event, as opposed to a repeated history of bluffing and conniving.

From across the office, Austen held up his hand and rubbed his thumb and forefingers together in the universal gesture of cash-money. Then he laughed happily and turned back to his cushy job of querying timesheets and denying staff leave.

Adjouembe sighed. This was all just so painful. "Mr Malady, the last time I called your accounts department all I got was a voicemail from someone begging for rescue, and then the sound of them being dragged away by guards, then a long silence, and finally a long scream which was then cut off by a beep. We would appreciate it if you could pay the bill yourself, please." He put squeezed the bridge of his nose while he said it, dreading the stalling tactics to come.

The lifeguards were waving directly at her, urgent, telling her to come in now. The ones that were ushering in swimmers had that gentle and relaxed look. The body language of the ones gesturing at her told a different story.

There were two surfers out on the water with her. One had already started paddling towards the shore. The other was kneeling on his board, limbs out of the water, looking around to see where the shark was.

Casey wasn't sure which was the smarter move. Stay out here with the shark, but don't give it anything to bite? Or swim to the safety of shore, but tempt the shark along the way with your flippy-floppy hands?

Do you see how we express the thoughts and feelings of secondary characters without going 'inside' them?

There are a few language tricks we use:

  • Low modality verbs to reduce certainty and imply perception (they seemed tired).
  • Adjectives and adverbs to suggest emotional qualities (they laughed happily).
  • Prepositional phrases to convey speculation (as if this was the best news they'd heard).
  • Plus the main character can know enough about other characters' histories to make some claims with certainty (for example, "he turned back to his cushy job of querying staff timesheets" works if Adjouembe realistically knows what Austen does for his job day to day).
Write a third person limited subjective scene involving three characters. Describe thoughts and feelings for all three, but only go 'inside' the main character.

We've painstakingly established this rule that third person limited subjective means we can only go 'inside' the point of view character.

But... what about when stories have more than one point of view character? 🤔 

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